11-17-2022 12:01pm

National Unfriend Day on Social Media How We can Help Prevent More Victims

Anita Johnson-Brown Editor

Film Review: "Sextortion: The Hidden Pandemic"

DIRECTED and EDITED BY
Maria Demeshkina Peek

IN MEMORY OF:
Amanda Todd
Investigator Daniel Viar

THIS FILM IS DEDICATED TO:
All the victims of sextortion
Law enforcement who tirelessly fight this
horrendous crime

Protecting children is vital and important, start by continuing to teach every child to avoid strangers and online predators, unfriend anyone who they don't know, and any strangers that start liking photos, leaving messages in your child's DM, and anyone trying to obtain personal information about your child:

The makers of this film created an online educational curriculum in partnership with NCMEC, which is available at https://www.missingkids.org/netsmartz. This curriculum will be available to educators, parents, federal agents, and police departments, and is age-appropriate for middle and high school students.

November 17th is National Unfriend Day (thank you, Jimmy Kimmel!

Unfriending strangers on social media is a vital way that we can help and protect our families today and every day, if the kids don't know this person in real life, unfriend them. The United Nations declared this week that tomorrow, November 18th is the World Day for the Prevention of and Healing from Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse, and Violence. We can help and prevention is vital to save lives.

Most of the assailants in sextortion cases find children on social media with friend requests.

"Sextortion: The Hidden Pandemic," made its world premiere at this year's Santa Barbara International Film Festival as part of the Social Justice Feature Documentaries, and recently through the Spotlight Docs Series (a 501c3 that the filmmakers founded), the film recently completed a sold-out 20+ city educational tour around the country (to audiences over 5,000 people), where the filmmakers, and Federal agents who ran the landmark case (declassified for first time in this film), have been on site to experience the emotional and powerful moments—were victims and victims' families spoke up during the post-screening Q&A's.

They have over 200 additional requests across the globe asking for an educational screening series in their cities. The EU Parliament and The Pentagon have begun planning screenings with the filmmakers for January and beyond.

Justice was finally served in October for Amanda Todd, a Canadian teen who took her own life in one of the most high profile Sextortion cases on record.

It's important to note the difference between human trafficking (cases in the hundreds of thousands), and sextortion (cases in the tens of millions) – as sextortion is 1,000 times more prevalent, and is often the precursor to trafficking. 1 in 4 kids is affected or knows someone who has been affected by sextortion.

Through partnerships with the Department of Justice and Homeland Security, the filmmaking team had unique unrestricted access to all government documents for an international sextortion case of a Top Gun pilot with hundreds of victims, unsealed for this film for the very first time.

Updated by Anita Johnson-Brown

Video: Sextortion: The Hidden Pandemic, courtesy of
The Orchard Entertainment via Cinematic Red